It only seems as if theater were a gift from the gods. It was a human invention. It grew out of the choral recitals that were part of the big religious festivals in ancient Greece.
A fellow named Thespis, in 534 BCE, got the idea of having an actor play the role of the leading figure, arguing back and forth with the chorus. At least that’s what people said in Athens.
The Athenians were serious about their drama.
Drama was publicly funded, and the demand was enormous. Weekends had not been invented yet, but the Athenians had more than 50 holidays on the calendar. Some of the major festivals consumed dozens of plays. A contest entry for comedy was a single play. But an entry for tragedy was four: three tragedies and a satyr play, a short farce.
It’s hard to imagine that Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides were working at the same time.
How big a deal was the theater?
Two clues:
• After a single performance of Phrynichos’s “The Capture of Miletus,” the audience burst into hysterical weeping. (Miletus was to the ancient Athenians what Saigon and Kabul are to some Americans today.) The playwright was fined. The Assembly passed a law that made it a crime to produce the play again.
• In times of war, it was permissible to tap the theater fund in emergencies. It tempted some politicians to cut public funding for the arts. The Athenians quickly tired of the demagoguery. They passed a law making it a crime punishable by death to propose cutting the theater fund in times of peace.
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